Art with Heart has become a charity, but that hasn’t happened overnight. It’s been a long road to here.
Back in 2010 it seemed impossible, and whilst the road and the stepping stones to get here have been various, we’re so happy to be here.
As AwH turn 16, we’re ready for the next chapter – as a charity taking on bigger, bolder, even more exciting things. In 2020 we started to explore becoming a charity.
Some people we spoke to found it hard becoming a charity – giving everything you’ve built to be governed by other people (trustees), whilst others found it liberating – having fresh faced energy to turbo charge what they had built.
It’s no small decision, but by 2023 we started making moves to find trustees, commit to the paperwork and be a charity.
The cultural sector shoulders a responsibility to reflect the world, ask difficult questions and galvanise positive action. What might look like we’ve just cooked up five minutes ago is often at least 12 months fundraising for it to even happen.
Since 2020, the cultural sector has changed significantly. It’s never been harder to get funding – we were recently rejected with a strong application and told only 5% of eligible applications could be funded. That’s five in 100 brilliant worthy applications.
At Art with Heart we push best practice to the forefront, to be the best we can for all the people we work with.
But we can’t do that on a shoestring, which has meant that when funding hasn’t come in, we make the difficult decision to pause or cancel projects – or pivot to something new.
We make work with careful consideration and access at its core – socially our work is vital, but going ahead with a programme underfunded means compromising our ethics and going against best practice, particularly with access and care, so sometimes we have to make the difficult decision to pause, cancel, or completely redesign programmes when funding doesn’t come through.
With grant funding dwindling and oversubscribed to a level we’ve never experienced before, we are all having to rely more and more on the general public to stand with us in making the work possible.
But if you’re putting your hand in your pocket to fund our work, you want to know what it pays for, right? And we want to tell you!
We want you to be part of the planning, shaping the company and to know where your money goes.
At the moment donations exclusively fund projects which pay for materials, participants travel and making our work accessible. For Salford Voices this year, 2.5% of the project budget has been people-powered by donations and shop sales. Whilst that might not seem a lot, it makes an enormous difference – one we hope to grow up to 5% by next year.
As we head into a new year, we’ll be announcing more ways to be involved, including how to work with us to shape our creative programme. We want to keep growing WITH you.
We want Art with Heart to be people-powered at every level – and that includes you – as donors, as creatives, as participants, as audiences, we want to build Art with Heart together!
If you can, consider joining our Ko-Fi subscription to be a monthly donor, or make a one-off donation. We really do a happy dance every time you donate!
Donations
We are Art with Heart, and we want to bring together as many people as possible to unlock their creativity and connection to each other. As a registered charity (1205611), donations make it possible to deliver accessible, representative and inclusive projects, to engage more people, employ more freelancers and plan further into the future. Together, we are building Art with Heart, we would love you to join us! CLICK HERE to donate through our Ko-fi campaign.